Zero; My Heart Dog

My Heart Dog

Hey! Many of you have asked me about Zero and where she came from, how old she is etc. so I wanted to write a post and answer as much as I could for you. Also, she’s my heart dog so she totally deserves a post all to herself. 🙂

Why we got her:

When Dylan was younger he started going through that phase of wanting a little brother or a sister. Well, since I didn’t wasn’t even dating at the time, I knew that wasn’t going to happen so I figured it was time for a dog!

Side Note: I often joke that if I had the dog first, I might not have had the kid. I mean, if I tell Zero to sit, she just sits…right then…no questions, no complaining, no whining, she just does it. So much easier! LOL

Zero’s Background:

We found Zero at our local Humane Society. She was just under a year and a half old and had been picked up as a stray so they didn’t know anything about her. When we got her out of her kennel and into the big yard so we could see her more, she hardly even came over to us. There was just something about her, though, and we knew she was the one.

We brought her home and the next day when we took her to the vet, learned that she had heart worms…bad. My mom reminded me that the humane society said they would take her back if it was within 72 hours but I just couldn’t do that. First, I was afraid nobody else would adopt her knowing she had heart worms, and second, she was my dog. Like we already totally bonded and I just knew she was my dog.

Long story short, we put her though the pretty intensive heart worm treatment, killed all those little buggers off and she was healthy! We also learned that she was a pretty fearful dog…scared of so much. She would not walk up the stairs to our apartment so I had to carry her up and down for about a month until we finally coaxed her to walk up and down the entire flight by herself. She had no idea what the TV was and would hide behind my chair whenever it was on. She had no idea how to play with toys. When I would try to teach her fetch and I would throw the ball she would just look at me like, “well, that was stupid…why did you do that?”. She had no idea of anything.

To help socialize her more and build her confidence, we put her in agility with Dylan as the handler. They did great! He was about nine at the time and they even competed and won a couple of times! After that she continued to blossom. She learned how to play with toys, learned a ton of commands (she’s so super smart!) and she even got her CGC (Canine Good Citizen) certificate.

Other questions I get asked and more random stuff:

How old id she? 13 years old (but even the vet says she would never guess her being that old due to how healthy she is …yay!)What type of breed is she? I don’t know for sure. Someone asked me once if she was a kelpie. I had not even heard of that breed before so I looked it up and found pictures online that I could swear were Zero! So, by looks alone yes, I would think she is kelpie. What do you think?

Left: Images from Google for “Black Kelpie” — Right: Zero

Where did the name Zero come from? One of our favorite movies at the times was ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ (I still jam out to that soundtrack #soGood). The main character (Jack Skellington) has a dog named…yep…you guessed it…Zero.

Commands / Tricks She Knows:

Sit

Stay

Bang aka Play Dead

Be a bear (stands up on back feet)

Be sneaky (crawls with her belly on the floor)

Shake Hands

High Five

Roll Over

Here (Runs to me and sits at my feet)

Favorite Games:

Hide and Seek (with me and/or Dylan)

Find It : basically hide and seek except I hide her toy and make her find it

Keep Away with her frisbee (Dylan and I throw her frisbee back and forth and she’s in the middle jumping up and trying to get it..she freaking loves that game!)

Fetch with her tennis ball

Random Facts

She likes apples but wont eat a piece unless it’s peeled #soPicky

She looks up at the sky more than any dog I’ve ever seen. She loves gazing at the sky day or night.

She does not like any delivery truck. Fed Ex, UPS, Mailman, etc…Other trucks are fine

She hates storms and shakes like a leaf when there’s thunder

She’s awesome at soccer and it’s almost impossible to get the ball past her

Her favorite toy is her tennis ball

Her middle name is “Marie”. Not sure why, it just slipped out of my mouth one day when she was in trouble..lol….Zero Marie…

She would always help me get Dylan up in the mornings by burrowing under him and raising him up out of bed

So there you have it; a little bit about my heart dog and my best friend. I really can’t imagine life without her. She’s my protector, my companion, my best friend, my partner in crime…pretty much my everything. If you have any other questions that I didn’t answer on here, feel free to comment and I’ll reply 🙂

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9 thoughts on “Zero; My Heart Dog”

Please, pretty please, when you have a quiet day do consider turning much of the above into a guest post for Learning from Dogs. My readers will just love this account of you meeting Zero and he becoming part of your life in those special, unique dog-person ways! More details here: https://learningfromdogs.com/interaction/